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Thread: The Semi-Unofficial Pistol-Forum Car geek, gearhead, hot rodder, and vehicle thread

  1. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by RevolverRob View Post
    Corvettes are cool, I guess, my wife like Corvettes. Well...sort of C2 and C3 Corvettes, preferably with somewhere around 500-hp and three pedals. She referred to the C7 and C8 as, “Old people sports-cars.” .
    At first it was hard to picture the C7 as an old person sports car. Considering the younger generation that is driving now are millennials, I’ll take that as a compliment.

  2. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bucky View Post
    No to all..?

    I actually just really like the cars. I don’t like driving much, but I like driving these.
    That list is tongue-in-cheek, poking a little fun at the stereotypical 'Corvette guy'. If you're not all of those things then I'm pretty sure you're just fine, and thereby a proper car geek/gearhead, for whatever my opinion is worth.

    About your vettes, though; what years/models/transmissions? Any plans for modifications?

  3. #53
    Supporting Business NH Shooter's Avatar
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    My first motor head car was a '66 Mustang convertible I inherited in 1970. It started as a 289-2V automatic and ended of converted to a 4-speed with a 4.11:1 posi rear and full engine make over (pistons, cam, high rise intake, Holley 4V, etc.). Back in the early 70s stock muscle cars were good for the low 14s or high 13s, the Mustang was good for low to mid 14s, which was respectable for a small block street car.

    I owned some other semi-interesting cars along the way, including a 2006 5MT WRX I purchased new and then a year later traded it in for a new 2007 Forester XT (FXT). I really wanted another 5-speed manual but ended up with a 4-speed auto in the FXT, which was good for my Long Island-to-NH commutes at the time but I hated otherwise.

    In 2011 I got seriously bitten by the Subaru modding bug and went full retard with the FXT. It was a giant boatload of fun taking the stock FXT to a vehicle that in 2013 ran the quarter mile in 12.9 seconds at 108 MPH with an automatic. I owned it up until last year when at 149,000 miles it needed an engine overhaul which I could not get the family finance department (my wife) to approve. I sold the FXT to another Subaru enthusiast here in NH and inherited my wife's 2009 Volvo S40 2.4i, which does the quarter mile in about a 3 hours:14 minutes @ 23 MPH.

    I really miss the Forester.













    Here's a video I had forgotten about. Crank up the sound and listen to the gear shifts. When the car was stock I could order a pizza in the time it took to shift gears. After some tuning that issue was addressed. :-)

    Last edited by NH Shooter; 12-11-2019 at 07:26 AM.

  4. #54
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    Quote Originally Posted by NH Shooter View Post
    My first motor head car was a '66 Mustang convertible I inherited in 1970. It started as a 289-2V automatic and ended of converted to a 4-speed with a 4.11:1 posi rear and full engine make over (pistons, cam, high rise intake, Holley 4V, etc.). Back in the early 70s stock muscle cars were good for the low 14s or high 13s, the Mustang was good for low to mid 14s, which was respectable for a small block street car.

    I owned some other semi-interesting cars along the way, including a 2006 5MT WRX I purchased new and then a year later traded it in for a new 2007 Forester XT (FXT). I really wanted another 5-speed manual but ended up with a 4-speed auto in the FXT, which was good for my Long Island-to-NH commutes at the time but I hated otherwise.

    In 2011 I got seriously bitten by the Subaru modding bug and went full retard with the FXT. It was a giant boatload of fun taking the stock FXT to a vehicle that in 2013 ran the quarter mile in 12.9 seconds at 108 MPH with an automatic. I owned it up until last year when at 149,000 miles it needed an engine overhaul which I could not get the family finance department (my wife) to approve. I sold the FXT to another Subaru enthusiast here in NH and inherited my wife's 2009 Volvo S40 2.4i, which does the quarter mile in about a 3 hours:14 minutes @ 23 MPH.

    I really miss the Forester.
    A good friend of mine back in high school had a '65 hardtop 289 4V, and that was a damn cool car. It's amazing how much aftermarket support still exists for them! My late Uncle had a '68 fastback, factory 428 Cobra Jet 4-spd car in Prairie Bronze with black vinyl buckets. If I hit Powerball, I'd spend a stupid amount of money to find that car again.

    About the FXT - a 108mph trap is cooking for an auto FXT on the stock turbo!
    Man, I wish I'd started this thread a year and a half ago, I could have helped you source a fresh EJ25T longblock for a pittance, especially if you'd have been happy with stock pistons and rods!

    Any prayer of getting you out of that slow Volvo misery? There's *gotta* be a way!!

  5. #55
    Site Supporter OlongJohnson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JRB View Post
    That said, C6's and C7's are fucking fantastic cars to build, and it's almost guaranteed the C8 will be phenomenal to build as well.
    A Z51 package LS3 powered C6 is a great canvas for a monster build. A C6 Z06 is a fantastic start to building an properly insane street car, and the C7 Z06 is even better because ~725+whp is available for the asking with basic mods.
    I don't care much for the cliche jean-shorts Corvette guys, but Corvettes are awesome cars to build up or just enjoy if you actually *drive* the things. 6MT three-pedal trans required, of course. Though I will say this - the C7 Z06 is the first sports car I've ever driven that impressed me with an automatic trans, and basically the only one at this point. It shifts quickly and works very well and it's FAST. I'd still prefer a 6MT though.

    On Carbon-ceramic brakes: They're wonderful until you need to replace them. On a customer's C7 Z07 package car that had the carbon brakes, they were torched at 10k miles and the replacement cost for pads and rotors broke into the 5 digit range. Prices on those parts have softened up a little bit, but a front carbon rotor and pad replacement on a Z07 is still over $7k. That's a complete 8-pot/6-pot Brembo BBK for *BOTH* axles!
    By the time you're truly exceeding what iron rotors and sound brake pad selection can offer, you're in a spec racing class not in a street car.
    Carbon brakes are one of the few 'race car' options I'd skip on any car with a license plate.
    "Corvette guy" hazing isn't complete if it doesn't include white leather clothing and checkered flags or checkerboard somewhere. And gold chains and chest hair, if you're really going for it.

    Ferrari guys have to live down matching branded shoes. (Which reminds me I want to do a simple wheels/tires/brakes upgrade on an F360 one day. Need to get a lot richer somehow.)

    If you say you want to go fast around a track and have the budget for it but don't at least strongly consider a C6 6MT, you're full of chit. (Wheels and) tires, a 355x32 four-piston front-only BBK, maybe a set of shocks and some setup make that one of the fastest options out there. Heads/cam/headers/intake/tune if you want to go faster without turning the whole car into one giant heat exchanger.

    A thing that's often overlooked is how long a car will operate at its capability. Many very fast cars will destroy themselves with heat in a short time on the track. My preference is for cars that can go out, establish a steady-state operating condition at the limit of their performance that's stable until either they're out of gas or the session is over (20-30 minutes minimum), cool off, and go out and do it again as many times as you want. That includes engine, drivetrain, brakes, tires... all the systems on the car. This was the idea behind the NA FD a few pages ago. All the people I've known with NA rotary track cars who keep the porting and revs reasonable just keep doing laps.

    Carbon ceramics are nice for the street, but they are actually less capable and durable, IME, than an appropriately-configured iron rotor setup. Even McLaren, several years back, made the iron rotor setup standard on their new hotness. Their testing had revealed the same thing all the testing I was involved in had revealed: By the time a carbon ceramic rotor is big enough to control temperatures at the level where it will live on the track, the system overall ends up being heavier than an iron rotor setup with the same performance and durability. (Plus, you end up having to have pointlessly enormous wheels to package it... Says the guy whose current sporty car is much better with a "minus one" upgrade. Went from 19s to 18s, 20mm wider, 45 lbs lighter.) I'm not aware of any fundamental changes in the technology since that time; there certainly didn't appear to be any in the pipe back then.

    Carbon-carbon brakes as used on pure race vehicles (F1 and bikes, for example) are a different world. I have no direct experience with them, so I'm not talking about them.
    Last edited by OlongJohnson; 12-11-2019 at 08:44 AM.
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    Not another dime.

  6. #56
    Supporting Business NH Shooter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JRB View Post
    A good friend of mine back in high school had a '65 hardtop 289 4V, and that was a damn cool car. It's amazing how much aftermarket support still exists for them! My late Uncle had a '68 fastback, factory 428 Cobra Jet 4-spd car in Prairie Bronze with black vinyl buckets. If I hit Powerball, I'd spend a stupid amount of money to find that car again.
    Oh, the cars my group of friends had back in those days: a variety of 383 and 440 Mopars, a 454 Chevelle and the perhaps the (unknown at the time) largest goldmine, a 1970 Boss 302 in red with black stripe. At Westhampton drag strip on Long Island, a friend with a stock Dodge Super Bee (Roadrunner equivalent) with a bench seat and column-shifted Torqueflite trans was the fastest. Never figured out why that 383 ran so strong. Just as amazingly, a 440 GTX was the biggest pig of the group.

    Quote Originally Posted by JRB View Post
    About the FXT - a 108mph trap is cooking for an auto FXT on the stock turbo!
    The turbo had been upgrade to a VF48, which was the stock turbo on the 2008 WRX STi. Bigger intercooler, full turbo-back exhaust, full intake and coolest of all, an Aquamist water/methanol injection system were the main power mods (see photo of gauges above, the Aquamist gauge on the right). Then there were suspension mods, sound system, etc. and I never kept track of how much $$ I had sunk into the Forester. When my wife said "no more" last year, I couldn't mount much resistance. It was a ton of fun while it lasted.

    Quote Originally Posted by JRB View Post
    Any prayer of getting you out of that slow Volvo misery? There's *gotta* be a way!!
    Perhaps. Waiting to see what the "all new" 2021 WRX looks like: there are rumors of combined electric and turbo flat-4 propulsion. That would be worth me taking a close look.

  7. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by JRB View Post
    That list is tongue-in-cheek, poking a little fun at the stereotypical 'Corvette guy'. If you're not all of those things then I'm pretty sure you're just fine, and thereby a proper car geek/gearhead, for whatever my opinion is worth.

    About your vettes, though; what years/models/transmissions? Any plans for modifications?
    It's all good. I sometimes hesitate to even share that I have them, for fear of seeming like I'm showing off. I'm not, I just really like them.

    So, the story of how I wound up with two:

    About 5 years ago, it was the wife's idea to get a convertible sports car. We decided on a Corvette, and I convinced her on the stick shift, which I even sent her to driving school for. We bought a used '09 convertible. She struggled with the stick, and eventually stopped driving the car. After a few years she got tired of not being able to drive the car, and I agreed to buy an automatic as long as it was new and was a Z06. So we traded the '09 on a 2019 Z06 Convertible. After a few months I was really missing the stick shift. I came across a very clean 2012 Grand Sport Coupe, with a 6 speed manual and all season Pilot Sport tires (a big plus because I wanted an every day / all year car).

    As for mods, no plan for any at this time. The 650 HP Z06 is such a beast already, and I decided to take the advice that we give many here regarding guns. I'm going to driver's school to learn how to better make use of what is already there first. Additionally, I don't want to mess up the warranty, which will be 5 years on the power train.

    As for the Grand Sport, I was originally considering adding a super charger. However, I'm enjoying it just as it, and it is a daily driver (unless there is snow, ice, or the roads are salt covered). Heck, we I drove it to Georgia and back 6 weeks ago (averaged better than 24mpg too!). I did add a nice Kenwood stereo with Apple Play, which is kind of a mod. . Even if I do consider doing something in the future, I'd want to wait the one year extended warranty provided by the dealership. (Actually, I do really need to do a skip shift eliminator on this, as I've done on my previous Vette as well as my SS Camaro).

  8. #58
    The R in F.A.R.T RevolverRob's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by OlongJohnson View Post

    A thing that's often overlooked is how long a car will operate at its capability. Many very fast cars will destroy themselves with heat in a short time on the track. My preference is for cars that can go out, establish a steady-state operating condition at the limit of their performance that's stable until either they're out of gas or the session is over (20-30 minutes minimum), cool off, and go out and do it again as many times as you want. That includes engine, drivetrain, brakes, tires... all the systems on the car. This was the idea behind the NA FD a few pages ago. All the people I've known with NA rotary track cars who keep the porting and revs reasonable just keep doing laps.
    I know you can build something that meets those capabilities, with enough money, time, and effort. But for me, it's hard to imagine, at least with respect to production cars, that particular mark is not met or exceeded by either a Miata/MX5, a Corvette, or a 911.

    I find it very hard to argue with the general idea that those three cars are not the benchmarks by which all others can or should be judged.

    I set my approximate performance mark for the Sunbeam build to MX-5 Cup performance metrics when on slicks. And MX-5 Club Sport metric on all-season street tires (I'll be in the same weight ballpark as an NC/ND MX-5 and but with more HP, I suspect I can best the Club Sport when I'm on summer tires).

    I don't know exactly what will be next after the Sunbeam, though I think it will be either a 911 or a slab-side small-block Cobra kit build. The latter would be firmly aimed at punishing Corvette and 911 drivers.
    Last edited by RevolverRob; 12-11-2019 at 04:46 PM.

  9. #59
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    Just saying - bought this in 1981 as a gas guzzler off a Savannah used car lot as a poor college student thanks to the bank of Dad ($2600 or so) and I still have it

  10. #60
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    My favorite daily driver - 2006 MB C55AMG - think of a luxury 4 door Mustang GT. Commuted 100 miles per day in Atlanta until it got rear ended. Was fixed but had a computer glitch and went into "limp mode" randomly so it had to go. Had a lot of cars but I really loved this one!
    Last edited by ranger; 12-11-2019 at 05:13 PM.

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